PB2347: GLOBAL REPRESENTATION AMONG JOURNAL EDITORS IN HEMATOLOGY: ARE WE DIVERSE, EQUITABLE, AND INCLUSIVE?
Authors: A. Gómez-De León, A. Noyola-Pérez, L. Gil-Flores, E. Ramos-Barrera, E. Rojas-Guerrero, H. Martínez-Espinosa, V. Rodríguez-González, P. Colunga-Pedraza, L. Tarín-Arzaga, O. Cantú-Rodríguez, H. Gutiérrez-Aguirre, G. Ruíz-Argüelles, D. Gómez-Almaguer
Journal: HemaSphere (2022)

Background: Editorial board members are responsible for the quality of content accepted to a scientific journal, ensuring its ethical integrity, appropriate methodology, presentation, novelty, and potential impact, serving as guides throughout the peer-review process. Journal editors (JEs) are selected due to their expertise in a field, publication record, and history of collaboration with a scientific journal. Assessing diversity and inclusion in editorial boards is needed to understand which biases in research may be present. Having a diverse editorial board can balance perspectives and reduce these biases. In the field of hematology, this has not been assessed. Aims: We aimed to analyze the characteristics of indexed hematology journal (HJs) editors worldwide. Methods: We used the InCites Journal Citation Reports (JCR) to extract information from all indexed journals in the Hematology category. Each journal´s website was screened, and we extracted data on the composition of the editorial board, including editors-in-chief and associate editors and excluded editorial board members with other roles which are not of editorial capacity. JEs were classified according to their institution’s country of residence, academic position, and sex, and were compared according to each HJs characteristics, including impact factor quartiles, open access availablity, and scope. The countries of JEs were classified according to the World Bank classification and Human Development Index. Information from each journal and JEs was extracted by one author, and cross-checked for accuracy by a second and third reviewer. Results: We reviewed 93 HJs indexed in the JCR and found a total of 959 persons identified as JEs with their overall characteristics presented in Table 1. One in four JEs were women with this difference present across HJ impact factor quartiles. Only 13 out of 111 editors-in-chief were women (11.7% vs. 88.3%; p<.001). Most JEs work in high income countries (86%) and are affiliated to institutions with a very high index of human development (94.37%), most frequently in the United States (34.9%), followed by Germany (8.9%), Italy (8.3%), and the United Kingdom (5.4%). Only 124 JEs (12.9%) are working in low- and middle-income countries, 17 in the top impact factor quartile (6.6% of all top-tier JEs). Most JEs from LMICs work in upper-middle income economies, being Brazil the country with the highest number of editors (n=36), followed by China (n=35) and only 2 editors (0.2%) working in a low-income country. The average article processing charges among was $2,485 USD. Image:Summary/Conclusion: Three quarters of JEs are men which shows a lack of equity of representation. The majority of HJs and their editorial board members come from high income countries, therefore their distribution is not equitable nor correlated with the global burden of hematological disease. Efforts to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in HJs should be undertaken.